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Community
General Tabletop Discussion
D&D Older Editions
Basic D&D Was Selling 600,000+/Year At One Point
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<blockquote data-quote="Jer" data-source="post: 8688477" data-attributes="member: 19857"><p>The thing to keep in mind that for most games (and I mean games in general here) there's always a divide between the casual player who enjoys the game and the hardcore player who really gets into it. Settlers of Catan is huge in the board game world, but how many households own all of the expansions and how many just own Catan and it sits on the same shelf as their Monopoly, Clue and Scrabble games and they'll pull it out for family game night or when friends come over? (And even with Scrabble - there's the players who will play those games as a social activity, and then there are the players who will compete in tournaments. Almost every game has their hard core - I'd say kids games like CandyLand are the exception but who knows? Someone would probably point me at a Battle Royale CandyLand tournament where the players play to the death or something).</p><p></p><p>So when we're looking at these numbers we're looking at the "core" books - which from what we know are where the bulk of the sales were. But what we're not seeing is the long tail of purchases from the hard core folks in the game. Despite my love for BECMI I would be willing to bet that if we look at annual sales of AD&D branded supplements and compared them to D&D branded supplements, the AD&D group would be selling more units per product than the D&D ones[*]. Because I will bet there are more sales of just a Basic Set and then no further purchases than there were sales of a PHB and then no further purchases, meaning that there were more of the hard core gaming folks who would spend money on the game beyond their initial purchase in the AD&D group than in the D&D group.</p><p></p><p>[*] I'd be willing to be this because, despite TSR being just horribly mismanaged, if it's the case that both the D&D boxed sets were outselling AD&D books and D&D supplements were also outselling AD&D supplements then their management practices move from being just simple mismanagement and into utterly incomprehensible nonsense out of a Lovecraft novel written for accountants. It would require some real non-Euclidean accounting to justify it.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Jer, post: 8688477, member: 19857"] The thing to keep in mind that for most games (and I mean games in general here) there's always a divide between the casual player who enjoys the game and the hardcore player who really gets into it. Settlers of Catan is huge in the board game world, but how many households own all of the expansions and how many just own Catan and it sits on the same shelf as their Monopoly, Clue and Scrabble games and they'll pull it out for family game night or when friends come over? (And even with Scrabble - there's the players who will play those games as a social activity, and then there are the players who will compete in tournaments. Almost every game has their hard core - I'd say kids games like CandyLand are the exception but who knows? Someone would probably point me at a Battle Royale CandyLand tournament where the players play to the death or something). So when we're looking at these numbers we're looking at the "core" books - which from what we know are where the bulk of the sales were. But what we're not seeing is the long tail of purchases from the hard core folks in the game. Despite my love for BECMI I would be willing to bet that if we look at annual sales of AD&D branded supplements and compared them to D&D branded supplements, the AD&D group would be selling more units per product than the D&D ones[*]. Because I will bet there are more sales of just a Basic Set and then no further purchases than there were sales of a PHB and then no further purchases, meaning that there were more of the hard core gaming folks who would spend money on the game beyond their initial purchase in the AD&D group than in the D&D group. [*] I'd be willing to be this because, despite TSR being just horribly mismanaged, if it's the case that both the D&D boxed sets were outselling AD&D books and D&D supplements were also outselling AD&D supplements then their management practices move from being just simple mismanagement and into utterly incomprehensible nonsense out of a Lovecraft novel written for accountants. It would require some real non-Euclidean accounting to justify it. [/QUOTE]
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